Omnivore Atlanta

Well, here’s something cool. Ezra Klein has begun a new bi-weekly column, Gut Check, in the Washington Post. It’s about food and politics.

In preparation for his first column, Klein interviewed Robert Kenner, the director of Food, Inc., and Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and a consultant on the film.

Klein’s first column looks at the film. A snippet:

Amid all the concern over global warming, we are beginning to reckon with the fact that meat production accounts for more carbon emissions than cars. As we labor to reform the country’s health-care system, we now realize that the skyrocketing costs are in no small part due to the way our diets make us obese and sick. An IBM poll released last week found that 77 percent of Americans want more information about the food they buy. That’s no surprise. As food writer Michael Pollan says at the start of the film, “the way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than the previous 10,000.” The way we think about the way we eat hasn’t kept up.

Quite the opposite, in fact. We know rather less about our food than our grandparents did. In part, that’s because the process of creating food in a lab is less familiar than the process of growing it in a garden. Food producers might have to print ingredient lists, but no one ever passed a law saying we had to understand them. (How do you hydrogenate an oil, anyway?)

But there also has been a concerted effort to pull a curtain across the food production system. You see that twice in “Food, Inc.” Once, when a farmer who raises chickens for Tyson agrees to allow cameras onto his farm, only to have Tyson quickly call and persuade him to rescind his offer. And again, when Monsanto refuses to comment on, well, anything. It’s one thing to be kept out of Dick Cheney’s underground lair(s?). But we’re eating this stuff.

Klein is also the author of a blog on domestic policy and economics for the Post.

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SMOKE ’EM IF YOU GOT ’EM: Businessmen in Food, Inc.

The harrowing documentary Food, Inc. serves up a kind of sampler’s platter of the recent culinary exposé trend. Like Super Size Me, it touches on the physiological effects of a fast food diet and further examines the assembly line approach to restaurant service. Recapping the themes of King Corn, Food, Inc. reveals how agricultural policies enable farming practices that put corn in seemingly every item at the grocery store, including cheese, batteries and diapers. It even goes to the source of Richard Linklater’s dramatization of Fast Food Nation to explore the industrial mistreatment of cattle and cattle workers alike.

The tours of sprawling slaughterhouses and dark chicken houses can put you off your feed, but Food, Inc. leaves generous helpings of anger and despair on your plate as well. The documentary cites examples of massive, secretive corporations suing small competitors into oblivion and making indentured servants out of employees in once-prized professions. In its scope, effectiveness and unmistakable passion, it’s the must-see documentary of the bunch, if you can take the heat.

Continue reading “Food, Inc. reveals hidden costs on the menu”

(Photo courtesy Magnolia Pictures)

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A bill was introduced in the House of Representatives yesterday that would give the FDA much greater oversight on where food additives come from, what they go into, and who violates cleanliness standards along the way.

The legislation is a response to the salmonella outbreak due to contaminated peanuts that left nine dead earlier this year. Inspectors found that a Georgia plant for the Peanut Corporation of America had not been inspected for seven years, and that the company had not disclosed contaminants when they found them in their products.

Under the new bill, the FDA will charge every food facility $1000 to pay for the new system of checks. Private laboratories used to test products will report to the governmental agency, and manufacturers and handlers will have to identify and document contamination risks. The hope is that the FDA will be able to trace any product from source to a consumer’ stomach — the lack of such ability was one of the major issues in the recent salmonella outbreak.

(Photo by Alice Welch)

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On Sun. Feb. 22, Athens will host its 16th Annual A Taste of Athens while celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Community Connection—the beneficiary of the event.

From 5-8 p.m. at the Classic Center (300 N. Thomas St.) more than 50 local restaurants will provide wine and beer tasting, food and a silent auction. There will also be a birthday cake competition showcasing local restaurants and bakeries.

General Admission is $45 and VIP access costs $75. That gets you access to the VIP Taste Garden, early entrance, special gifts and more. Proceeds benefit the Community Connection. It is an organization that links those in need of social services and the services they need.

For more information visit the Taste of Athens or call 706-208-0900. Also check out Community Connection for details on the organization.

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